


Superficial Faith

by Alahnore



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 18:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10859196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alahnore/pseuds/Alahnore
Summary: His smile was like a spark, brilliant and shocking in the darkness.





	Superficial Faith

There was a chill, a sense of ice running through his artificial veins. The water his body ran on was freezing up, becoming tiny daggers as they ripped him up from the inside out, spilling to join the cooling red puddle forming around him. It was so cold, so slippery, that he kept falling no matter how much he tried to pick himself up. Yet despite the futility of it, the pitiful state he was in, he kept trying to get up. To keep moving. Eventually he’d warm up, he’d be fine…

_I stare down at him, and he stared back. Even under our goggles I knew our eyes met. There was nothing but the usual reverence his type had for my type in his eyes, in his expression. But after years of fighting, of being a tool of war, I learned to keep my own facial structures still. He, however, was unable to do so. It was only made more apparent when he saluted me, greeting me so brightly, and he smiled._

9S couldn’t find traction. Gloves were slick with blood–water? Blood? What was he made of anymore?–his knees slipped as the skin was long eroded off and left smooth knee plates. He tried to crawl. To get away. To find some way out so he could stay alive. It was a code running it’s string, self preservation kicking in. A pre-programmed instinct that humans were said to have once. Fight or flight. Fighting he lost. Now he had to flee. Somehow, somewhere. All he could see was cold stone and colder blood. _His_  blood. Only his. He failed to defend himself. Again.

_It was the third time. I tried to keep myself centered, walled off, but he had a way of knocking the pebbles down. Be it his demeanor, his steadfast loyalty, his smile or just the way he seemed to compliment me, I never could fully keep myself away. I slipped. Often. No one but he knew, and he only knew at times._

_“You need to be more careful, 2B,” he admonished me. His hands worked over the gash across my back, patching the damage with the materials we had. I just need my NFCS back online and I could get us out of here.  
_

_“Even a high end model like you has limits.” he continued.  
_

_He wasn’t watching. I gave in to the human-like urge and rolled my eyes. It was such an impulsive and unnecessary move I made sure to never do it again. “That’s why you’re here, Nines. To back me up.”_

He lost. There was no weapon. His controls were now in failure, the modules beginning to scramble from the data noise and leakage of needed fluids. Gears were grinding in his ears. He could hear the hum of the servos, of the black box. His body went limp on the ground and he could feel the shut down sequence. How many times did he feel this routine? The seeping of his fluids, the failure of his systems?

9S clung to his memory module. They slipped through his fingers but he tried to pool them nonetheless. He heard the click of heels, knowing what was coming and yet the sound still gave him some hope. He wanted to be spared. But barring that… _Let me have my memories. Please. Please. Please._

_Please stop moving. Stop squirming. Stop writhing. I try to move, to make it stop, to end it all again, but I can’t move. How could I miss? Even after all this time how could I still miss? Every time I hesitate. Every time he’s left gasping and his eyes plead with me. But I can’t give in. If I do someone else will take over. Someone else who won’t care, who won’t remember him as he is each time._

_[Please. Please. Please…]_

Don’t beg. Don’t grovel. He was supposed to be too proud for that. He is… he was YoRHa…

_Please. Don’t beg. Don’t look at me like that. Just let go._

He had a feeling this wasn’t the first. It won’t be the last probably. How many lifetimes, with her, did he lose? How many times did that white sword turn red with his blood? 

_[Let me remember… they’re my memories… they’re mine… please…]_

_Stop it. Just stop. Stop moving. Stop breathing. Stop functioning._

His sight was nothing but static and blurs. But he could make her out. Somehow he could still see the way she raised her sword. How she paused.

_Please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease p l e a s e they’re mine my memories my moments with you I want them I want them IwantthemIwantthemIwantyouIwantthemIwantthem_

_Just die already!!_

One more slice. A weak splatter, nothing left, and she took them. She ended him. That him at that moment, for that lifetime. 2E let the handle of the sword go, stumbling back a couple of steps, her hand coming to cover her goggles, press the cloth against her eyes. He was still so brilliant, so bright. His smile was always the same. It was the memory of that smile she held close, trying to superimpose it over the bloody scene she made of him now. Each time she remembered that smile, that brightness he had. For each of him, it was all she had left. Her rays of pure light.

How long could she continue to do this? To fight this war, the lies, and hurting the one she had come to hold so close? How long, she wondered.


End file.
